The organizers of “Humanitas“, the international conference held last summer in Naples, encouraged by that event's success, have decided to organize, in association with friends and colleagues in Hungary, a series of Latin seminars in Szeged, Hungary. These seminars, under the rubric “Litterarum vis”, will be held this summer from July 25 through August 1; younger participants will be invited to arrive July 22 for a two-day orientation, during which more experienced participants will initiate others in the active use of Latin. The event is intended to gather all those committed to the studia humanitatis to discuss, exchange experiences, and engage in dialogue with teachers and fellow students.

The themes addressed in the this summer's seminars will be as varied as the "vis" (impact, influence, force) exerted by "litterae" (letters, literature, scholarship). We will discuss the liberal arts and the studies represented by each of the muses, and how these sometimes quicken, sometimes slacken the passions; civic life and the art of rhetoric, through which the citizen becomes dicendi peritus and publici boni defensor; and history and its role in the education of the young, who gain an awareness of the virtues and vices of their own age as they compare it with the culture and customs of past centuries. In these discussions, the words of Cicero will guide and inspire us: pleni omnes sunt libri, plenae sapientium voces, plena exemplorum vetustas: quae iacerent in tenebris omnia, nisi litterarum lumen accederet: for haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solacium praebent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur.

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LITTERARVM VIS 2008
Omnium gentium seminaria de litterarum virtutibus penitus intellegendis
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http://www.litterarumvis.eu
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